FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH:

• Are the Celtics better after Thursday night?

Yes.

How much better?

That’s the question.

Yes, Ray Allen is a proven scorer. Yes, he takes pressure off Paul Pierce. But scoring points is not the Celtics’ problem. Stopping others from scoring points is. And Thursday night did nothing to address that.

Allen was never very good defensively and, now that he’s approaching 32 and coming off surgery to both ankles, doesn’t figure to get any better. The Celtics still need a defensive presence inside, and more size, to boot. They still need to get a lot better defensively before they become a team that can be taken seriously. They also now need help at the point with the loss of Delonte West, which leaves only the young Rajon Rondo along with Sebastian Telfair, whom they would love to cut ties with.

But the trade was symbolic, no question about that. This is no longer about playing for the future. It’s about winning games. It’s about the realization that Pierce may have only two or three great years left. It’s about both Danny Ainge and Doc Rivers trying to keep their jobs. There is no more pretense left.

That, in itself, is a significant shift in philosophy.

• Does anyone care about the America’s Cup anymore?

• And whatever happened to Dennis Conner, anyway?

• If the amazingly vacuous Paris Hilton didn’t exist, our amazingly bankrupt celebrity culture would have had to invent her.

• Nothing inflates a college basketball player’s rep more than doing well in the NCAA Tournament.

• Let’s see: Now the Celtics have Ray Allen and Allan Ray.

• Line of the Week comes from a headline in the New York Post: “Paris liberated: bimbos rejoice.”

• Line of the Week II comes from Anonymous, and is about a player who slid in Thursday night’s draft: “He’s got so much baggage, even Al Qaeda wouldn’t take him.”

• There are now two types of people in the world: Those who know what a sous chef is and those who couldn’t care less.

• The Nets made a smart move in taking a gamble on the troubled Sean Williams with the 17th pick.

• There’s no truth to the rumor that the Cincinnati Bengals need a parole officer more than they need a coach.

• Or that the Sox are going to send out a search party to find their offense.

• Just when you think you’ve already got every gadget known to man, they come up with iphones.

• Wars have started and ended in the time it’s taking URI to get a new athletic director.

• And relationships have started and ended in the time it takes to play a baseball game these days.

• You’ve got to love Big Schill, who was upset that Theo was saying it might be good for him to sit out until after the All-Star break. So now what? He’s out until after the All-Star break.

• You don’t think sports change, Bunky? How about tennis, which was hotter than an asphalt court 25 years ago and now is something much less than that.

• Remember back there in those days of sweet innocence when the Lottery was going to solve all of the state’s budget problems?

• The Yankees miss Gary Sheffield’s bat.

• Are the Brewers actually good, or is this just a mirage?

• Mike Marra, the high school basketball star from Smithfield who is off to Northfield Mt. Hermon in the fall for two years, already has caught the interest of both the Rams and the Friars, among others.

• No one writes about Louisiana any better than James Lee Burke, and two of the short stories in his new book, Jesus Out To Sea, are set in post-Katrina New Orleans.

• You would have thought Stephen A. Smith was sitting on Isiah’s bench waving a towel Thursday night.

• Don’t look now, but Orlando Cabrera is hitting .330 for the Angels, who have turned into a very good team.

• I’m hearing that if the Celtics kept the fifth pick, they were taking the Chinese kid.

• The recent Harper’s magazine has two fascinating articles on the unbelievable decline of two American cities — New Orleans and Detroit. Rebuild Iraq? Maybe we should start with American inner cities.

• What did pro athletes do before there were strip clubs?

• The word is that Fox Sports Net will soon become Comcast.

• There’s no truth to the rumor that Paris Hilton is the new Madonna without the talent.

• Or that the “NY” on the Yankee caps stands for next year.

• Don’t take for granted the Celtics’ desire to rid themselves of the aging Wally Sczcerbiak and his inflated contract Thursday night.

• Or the fact that the word is that one of the reasons Kevin Garnett had no interest in coming to Boston was he didn’t want to play with Sczcerbiak.

• Can anything surprise you about the WWE anymore?

• There’s no truth to the rumor that if Paris Hilton were from Rhode Island, she’d have her own talk show.

• Either that, or saying she was Bruce Sundlun’s love child.

breynold@projo.com